In a Strange City Page 7

  She stopped, surprised by all the words that had come out of her mouth, and held her hand to her face again, as if to hold back anything else that might spill out.

  "Can we see his apartment here?"

  "No," Rainer said.

  "Why not? It's not a crime scene." This was Herman Peters, the Beacon-Light's police reporter. Rainer had stepped in it now, Tess thought. Peters would charm the landlord with his sweet little rosy-cheeked face, if only because Rainer had declared the apartment off limits. Peters specialized in getting that which was deemed ungettable.

  "It's a private residence that may yield important information in an ongoing investigation. We can't have reporters trooping through it to get little details, like what he read and what brand of shampoo he used."

  Tess was impressed in spite of herself. Rainer did know something of how journalism was practiced these days, how reporters gathered random bits and tried to construct shoddy wholes out of them.

  "Where is the apartment?"

  Rainer shook his head, but Mrs. Hilliard volunteered, "Near that big school, the one where they're always playing lacrosse so you can hardly park." North Baltimore, Tess deduced, near Johns Hopkins University. There were a lot of apartment buildings in that neighborhood.

  "Are police sure that Bobby Hilliard was the intended victim?" This was Herman Peters again, and he sounded irritable. Sob stories didn't interest him. Tess thought she had seen a lot of death, but, after just two years on the police beat, Peters was at five hundred bodies and counting.

  "No comment."

  "I have to ask because conflicting information has been coming out. Some say the shot was fired at a distance, from the law school construction site, but I've also heard it might have been from the catacombs."

  "There's no conflicting information because there's no information coming out of this department," Rainer said testily. "If you got that, it's not official, and you shouldn't print it."

  "Okay, okay. But if the other guy was standing between Bobby and his killer—assuming the other guy wasn't the killer—is it possible the shooter missed, hit the wrong one? You've ascertained that Bobby probably wasn't the regular Visitor. But was he the intended victim?"

  "That's not something I'm prepared to comment on just yet."

  "I can't imagine," Mrs. Hilliard put in, "that anyone would want to kill Bobby. He was a nice boy. He never bothered anyone."

  "He was a nice boy?" parroted a television reporter, a handsome African-American man, one of the second-teamers used on the weekend crews.

  "He was a nice boy," she repeated firmly, sure of something at last.

  "Did he ever speak of his plans for the future?" This was from WBAL's radio reporter, a young woman. Tess thought she saw her Norwegian buddy in the cluster of radio reporters, but she couldn't be sure. It was funny, how reporters were drawn to their own kind. The print reporters stood with the print reporters, while the television folks clustered down front and the radio people set up camp on the edge.

  The Hilliards looked puzzled.

  "I mean"—the WBAL reporter looked embarrassed—"no one plans to be a waiter forever."

  "They don't?" Mrs. Hilliard asked. "He loved his job. And sometimes he got to take food home. When he visited, he'd bring us leftovers from the restaurant, and you know what? The aluminum foil would be in the shape of a swan."

  Tess could tell Rainer's appetite for center stage was waning rapidly. He had probably put this together just to get the press off his back, figuring it would be easier for the Hilliards to run this gauntlet once and get it over with. Tess hoped he had plotted an escape route for them, because everyone here was going to clamor for one-on-one interviews as well. Reporters were unruly houseguests, taking each kindness for granted and whining for yet more liberties—the jackals who came to dinner.

  "Have you considered the possibility that your son was the victim of a hate crime?"

  The voice, instantly familiar to Tess, came from somewhere in the middle of the pack. It was a woman's voice, clear and sweet, with the kind of nonaccent that came from working hard to eradicate a stubborn one. Yet it wasn't a newscaster's voice. It had a slight excited quaver, and it was rapid, too rapid for broadcast. Tess craned her neck to see the speaker, but all she caught was a glimpse of short dark hair and a long delicate neck.

  Rainer appeared to recognize the woman, however. His face flushed, he wagged a furious finger at his questioner. "This is for press, not agitators. You got no standing, no standing here at all."

  "Fine. Then I'll let the reporter from the Alternative repeat my question, which you've refused to answer despite his repeated requests."

  A husky male voice obligingly shouted out, "Have you been told your son may have been the victim of a hate crime?"

  "You don't have to answer that," Rainer barked at the Hilliards, scaring them so that they backed away from the microphones. "It's not true, anyway."

  The media types began to buzz and stir, although Herman Peters simply looked impatient. He was ahead of everyone else on this story, Tess realized; he had already investigated—and rejected, or at least tabled— this strange and tantalizing tangent. The Hilliards were more confused than ever, glancing between Rainer and the roomful of reporters they wanted to appease.

  "Hate crime," Mrs. Hilliard said at last. "I'm not so sure what that is. I mean, if someone kills you on purpose, they pretty much hate you, right?"

  They don't know, Tess realized, as an awkward silence fell. Reporters understood the significance because the questioner was from the Alternative, a local paper for the gay community, but Bobby Hilliard's parents were completely in the dark.

  "Good point," Rainer said, clasping Mrs. Hilliard's shoulder. "Good point." He was really only 99.9 percent an asshole. Unfortunately for Tess, she was never going to benefit from that 0.1 percent of niceness. She wondered if he would try to bring her in for questioning, after seeing her here.

  The woman's voice rose up again; Tess was close to placing it, but the speaker's identity still eluded her. It was familiar, but only as a memory.

  "For those members of the media who are interested in the story that's not being told here, local activists will be available later today on Monument Street at Mount Vernon Square, west of Charles."

  "You got a permit?" Rainer challenged.

  "We don't need a permit to hold a press conference," the girlish voice replied evenly. "Do you have a permit?"

  Undone by her curiosity, past caring if she came into Rainer's sights again, Tess worked her way through the throng of reporters, finally catching a glimpse of the speaker's profile.

  Yes, she knew the woman who had spoken, although not as well as she once thought she would.

  Chapter 8

  "Cecilia. Cecilia Cesnik." Tess had hoped to catch up with her casually, to create the illusion their paths had crossed accidentally. But Cecilia had barreled out of the roped-off press area in such a rush that Tess had practically chased her down Fayette and onto President Street, overtaking her outside the garish facade of Port Discovery.

  Cecilia Cesnik had always been in a rush.

  She stopped and turned at the sound of her name, smiling warily. The wariness did not fade when she recognized who had called after her.

  "Tess Monaghan," she said, after a beat. It was not a pause to grope for a name, but a moment of reflection, as if she weren't sure what to say or if she wanted to say anything at all. "What can I do for you?"

  That was the assumption in the world Cecilia had chosen: Everyone always had an agenda. After all, she did.

  In looks, she was remarkably unchanged from the young law student Tess had met two years ago, when they were both rearranging their assumptions about what their lives might be. Her face was, if anything, more delicate, her dark hair still a short feathery cap that enhanced her birdlike appearance. Cecilia had been Cece then, a scared but determined East Baltimore girl who had decided she wanted more from life than a neighborhood boy and a march down the ai
sle in a twenty-pound white dress, followed by a reception in her father's tavern and sixty years of not much else.

  But Cece had been more tentative, too, her assertive-ness waxing and waning. This diffident manner had been dropped, along with the nickname.

  "You haven't changed much," Tess observed, referring to the surface details.

  Cecilia bristled. Tess had a feeling she would have taken equal offense if the opposite opinion had been offered. "You're one to talk. Don't you ever get a yearning to cut off all that hair?"

  "I get a trim every six months, or when the tip of my braid passes my bra strap. Whichever comes first. It's kind of like Jiffy Lube, three months or three thousand miles. I should have one of those little stickers on my mirror."

  "I'd hate to be a slave to my hair."

  "Long hair is as easy as short, when you wear it like this."

  "Huh."

  Cecilia was an extremist about hair. Getting rid of what she had called her Highlandtown hair—a cascading fountain of teased dyed curls—had been the beginning of her transformation. The Baltimore accent had not been shed so easily, but it came off too, eventually.

  The final step had been going home one night and telling her widowed father there would be no son-in-law, but how did he feel about daughters-in-law? Mr. Cesnik had rallied admirably. The last time Tess had seen Cecilia, she had been clerking for Tyner Gray between her second and third years of law school, and Tess had been diving into Dumpsters throughout Highlandtown, trying to confirm Mr. Cesnik's suspicions that his competitors in the tavern trade were serving frozen pierogies and passing them off as fresh.

  But that had been the summer before last. Cecilia must have graduated by now, assuming she hadn't been so consumed by her various causes that she had stopped going to classes.

  "So, you're a lawyer?"

  Cecilia nodded. "Passed the bar on my first try. I'm working for a small firm that does mostly civil work. This is strictly extracurricular."

  "And this is—"

  "I work with a local advocacy group for gays and lesbians. It's pretty ad hoc, not as organized as ACT UP. We meet on Sundays in a little office down at the Medical Arts building, swinging into action when we have something specific we want to address: bills before the City Council or the General Assembly. Or a threat to our community, such as this."

  "I'm sorry," Tess said, shaking her head, feeling dense. Cecilia had always had that effect on her. She was one of those people who could never remember that others didn't have access to her every thought, who sped ahead, impatient with those who didn't keep up with lightning-quick logic. "I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, a hate crime. And Bobby Hilliard was the victim? Someone stalked him, following him to Poe's grave and killing him because he was gay?"

  Nothing made Cecilia more impatient than a question she couldn't answer. She flapped a hand, as if to wave off an approaching panhandler.

  "We don't know everything just yet. We do have a tip that police are looking into this crime in conjunction with the attack on Shawn Hayes in his Mount Vernon home, right around New Year's. Do you know him? He sits on a lot of the artsy boards. He was beaten so badly he's in intensive care. He'll probably die the moment his family takes him off life support."

  Cecilia's voice was flat, almost emotionless. Her passion was for the big picture, not puny individuals.

  "Is this what the Blight was alluding to, in its on-line site? Aunt Kitty mentioned it to me yesterday."

  Cecilia's face brightened. "I remember your aunt Kitty and her bookstore. She was lovely."

  Tess was so used to everyone falling in love with Kitty that the remark barely registered. "She still is. Anyway, what's the link between Hayes and Bobby Hilliard?"

  "That's what we want the police to tell us. A sympathetic officer passed along the tip that the cops think the two cases might be linked. But our source is in vice; he doesn't know anything more. We fear some homophobic maniac has progressed from beating his victims to shooting them—which makes this a public safety issue for a large number of Baltimore residents, something the police seem reluctant to acknowledge. If this was someone who preyed on women, or children, the police—and the press—would have trumpeted the fact long ago."

  Tess shrugged, unconvinced. The police usually had good reasons for not telling everything they knew. The press, too, much as she hated to impugn any good motives to them.

  "So do you know for a fact that Shawn Hayes was beaten by some homophobic creep?"

  "No—but it was brutal and nothing was taken. The problem is, Shawn Hayes wasn't out-out."

  "Out-out?"

  "His friends were aware of how he lived his life, and he had been in long-term relationships over the years, but he was still… extremely private. He has grown children from a marriage that ended in divorce years ago. I mean, his kids know, of course, but he was never in-your-face."

  Tess thought about the Hilliards' confused expressions at the press conference. Shawn Hayes wasn't the only person who wasn't out-out.

  "Then I can see the cops' reluctance about discussing the lead publicly. You don't want to start talking about hate crimes against gay men if the victims aren't openly gay."

  "Why not?" Cecilia's anger flared as suddenly as a manhole cover popping from some unseen pocket of pressure. "Is it so awful to be gay? Is it libelous to be called a homosexual? Do you get upset when someone mistakes you for a nice Catholic girl, because of your last name and freckles?"

  "No," Tess said slowly, trying not to rise to the bait. For the first time, she understood what was meant when it was said someone was spoiling for a fight. There was something sour about Cecilia right now, as if the confrontation with Rainer had left her feeling unsatisfied, unfinished. "And I let a lot of anti-Semitic remarks go by, because most people don't know there's a Weinstein inside the Monaghan and it's not always worth the effort to remind them. But you can't go around claiming a crime for your own political ends before all the facts are in. What if you're wrong? If you shape these two crimes in such a way as to influence the public, you run the risk of confusing potential witnesses who might have information that doesn't gibe with your scenario."

  "I don't see how. It's up to the homicide cops to pursue all the leads they have. I didn't notice they had many. Did you?"

  "No, they don't seem to know much."

  The conversation stalled. Tess was reminded of the reasons she and Cecilia had dropped out of one another's lives, once their missions were no longer congruent. Cecilia's awakening as an activist had crowded out everything she deemed discretionary. Tess hadn't made the cut.

  "About Rainer—" She stopped, aware she was going to give advice she herself had been given but never taken.

  "The cop? What about him?"

  "I wouldn't make an enemy out of him. He doesn't have the biggest brain, but he does have a capacious memory. He remembers every slight and not much else. It's a deadly combination."

  "This isn't about him. It's not personal."

  "He won't see it that way. It's his case; that was his press conference." She stopped, distracted by the memory of the mob scene on War Memorial Plaza. How tiny the Hilliards had looked between those huge horses. "I feel bad for the parents."

  "Of course. Their son is dead."

  "His… lifestyle doesn't seem to have any reality to them. It's not just that they didn't understand the concept of a hate crime. It's that they couldn't see how their son could be the victim of one. Did you really need to press it home?"

  "Bobby Hilliard wasn't in the closet."

  "He moved almost two hundred miles away to live the way he wanted to. Maybe he was willing to allow his parents a certain amount of denial about a choice they might not understand or accept."

  "It's not a choice." Cecilia lifted her chin. "Besides, this is bigger than one cop, one family, or two grieving parents. This affects an entire community."

  "If you're right. A vice cop's half-assed tip isn't a guarantee of anything."

&nbs
p; "Well, that's all I'm trying to find out. Rainer could have answered my questions over the phone—if he had deigned to take my calls. He didn't want to play. So I had to move the game into the open. What brings you here, anyway?"

  Tess used the excuse she had prepared for Rainer. "I was just passing by, wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

  "Ever curious, aren't you, Tess?" Cecilia held out her hand, an oddly formal gesture that served only to remind Tess how distant they had become. "Well, it was nice seeing you. Drop by Shawn Hayes's house on Mount Vernon at six, if you want, watch me go live on all the stations, one after another. I've turned into quite the pro."

  "You were always a pro," Tess said, "but I don't think I could stomach another media event today. Why don't you call me sometime, and we'll have a drink?"

  "You got an office now?"

  "An office, a house, a dog, and a boyfriend. I'm downright respectable. You?"

  "An office, an apartment, a cat, and a girlfriend. I guess I'm pretty respectable, too. We've come a ways, haven't we, since I knocked you on your ass in that coffee bar. Remember?"

  "Only because you had the element of surprise going for you," Tess felt obliged to point out. "Under any other circumstance, I could have taken you."

  "Sure you could, Tess. Sure you could." But for the first time since they had begun speaking, Cecilia was smiling, her features genuinely warm. Then she turned and rushed down the street toward a pay parking lot.

  Tess wished she was always so sure of where she was going.

  Chapter 9

  Baltimore has a West Street, a South Street, a North Avenue, an Eastern Avenue, and several other variations on the compass's four points, but it was Tess's own East Lane that had the distinction of flummoxing pizza delivery men. That was okay with Tess. For one thing, she sometimes got a free pizza that way. For another, it must mean she was hard to find.